


I'm not them

by ChocoNut



Series: Tales of love (Season 3/4) [43]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brienne does have a bit of a lady boner here, Can be book canon divergence also, Chapter 2 to give closure, Eventual Romance, F/M, Feelings, Fluff, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27697552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoNut/pseuds/ChocoNut
Summary: “Stay with me, Brienne,” he implores, with a look that threatens to melt her down, with a softness uncharacteristic of him that leaves her in a fix.ORThe one where Brienne takes care of a sick and delirious Jaime after his maiming and they share a moment.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: Tales of love (Season 3/4) [43]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1483640
Comments: 23
Kudos: 120





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Edit : Chapter 2 is up.

Her chest bogged down by a weight she hasn’t carried before, she looks down at him, at what they’ve reduced him to. 

Shit and piss and vomit, a fever that refuses to break despite all measures, and not to mention his tantrums— when Brienne was first saddled with the arrogant Kingslayer, little did she know she’d be the sole recipient of more than his bitter tongue and his itch to kill her.

Little did she know there would come a day when she’d have to mother a young lad and not the golden lion, offering him all the care and compassion and all else it would take to put together a broken body and shattered confidence.

“Lie still.” She soothingly holds him down while she wipes away the debris from his chest, his tangled beard and matted hair. Once a beautiful man—what a waste they’ve laid him to!

“My sword hand,” he mumbles, slipping into one of his bouts of delirium again. “They deprived me of—” he turns away, his cheek moist—is that a streak of sweat or a lone tear of self-pity?

She remembers their last conversation, the way she’d tried to pull him out of his wallowing. This time, however, she cannot bring herself to be tough on him, to ruthlessly point out that this one failure ought not to bring him crumbling down. “With time, you will regain your lost glory,” she says, attempting to give him hope enough for him to recover, at least. “When you’re better, I’m certain you’ll—” 

“When I—I’m—” he slurs, tripping and stumbling over his words and consciousness. “What makes you thi—think I’ll ever—”

Unbidden, her idle hand slips into his. “You will.”

Almost immediately, he sags into the bed. Her touch seems to magically calm him down and she can instantly feel some of the stress drain away as he lets out a deep breath, relaxes. When his fingers curl up around hers, a jolt of mild panic and—and something more, a sensation she cannot explain, courses through her. She holds back to let it pass, but when she returns to touching him, replacing the wet cloth on his forehead, the odd shiver or two return again. Somewhat pleasurable and more alarming than she can manage, they come and go as she resumes her chore of purging his body of the undesired, her finger shaking with the occasional tremor when they brush his burning skin.

He cooperates as she goes on, but it’s not long until he starts shifting uncomfortably again. Eyes half-open, he fixes them on her. “Why are you doing this for me, wench?” When she struggles to answer, scrambling around her head, he presses his thumb to her knuckles. “None of them bothered to help—shunning me like I'm some—” he pauses again, struggling to come up with what he wants to say “—they all refused to touch me, to—”

“I’m not them,” she murmurs, his touch crippling parts of her mind, doing _things_ to parts of her that are now beginning to come alive. Despite wanting to free herself from his grip, she wants to sit like this for as long as he needs her, for as long as— 

“What I told you when we were… when we—” He tries to sit up, but collapses with a groan, his features folding in frustration, with a vulnerability he has never encountered before. “You do believe all that, I hope?”

She allows herself to fall deeper into the eyes that had once left her cringing with disgust. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Why would you?” he tosses back, leaving her in silence with a question she’s ill-equipped to answer. “Why would someone I treated like shit bother to even lend me an ear?”

“Because what you told me is actually the truth?” The pain in his eyes when he’d recounted his tale—she can still see traces of it. “Protecting my honour was a noble act of selflessness, Ser Jaime.” Shaking her head wryly at the recollection of all she’s had to endure from men all her life, she goes on to add, “All along, men have vied with each other to _get inside big Brienne_ ,” she relates, recalling the bet she’d incidentally heard of at Renly’s camp. “The ones that aren’t thinking I’m worthless, that is. As for the others, be it Red Ronnet or—”

“I’m not _them_ , Brienne.” 

She’s forced to halt at this change of tone. A soft _Brienne_ , it is, not wench or a carelessly tossed, _my lady_. She lets herself be drawn into those eyes—eyes that bear a tenderness she’s never seen in them before.

“Though I’ve been nothing short of a pain in the ass—” He stops, those eyes flutter shut again, his battered body giving way, weary with this over-exertion of trying to sustain a conversation this intense. “ _Selflessness_ , you say?” he abruptly resumes after a few seconds of rest, as if the word belongs to a foreign tongue. “Me?”

“Yes, _you_.” She averts her eyes from his, from his thighs she’s wiping away the sweat from, from what hangs between them. Limp, though it is now, she can’t help imagining it in its full glory, in better days and of what it would be like if he were to—

“Are you trying to get an eyeful of a poor old maimed man when he lies helpless and defenseless?” There’s a teasing lilt to his tone, again, something, she hasn’t heard since his maiming, his lips assuming a pale shadow of what used to be a smile that once annoyed her. “You’re blushing, Brienne.” And she feels herself heat up even more when she notices him watching her intently, taking in every blink, the slightest tremble of her lips, feels a bolt hit the pit of her belly when his touch absorbs the mounting sweat in her palm. “Like what you see? I remember you rudely jerking your eyes away when I stripped down at the bath, but this—” his eyes are twinkling, he’s clearly distracted, having a little respite from his suffering, albeit at her expense. “Are you now finally _interested_ —” 

“Oh, shut up,” she swats away his claim, words struggling to get all the way up her throat, pricking and scalding her as they make it past the obstacles they meet. Still burning inside at his blatant acknowledgement of what is going through her mind, she wriggles her hand off his grasp and tucks the covers to his chin. “Try and get some sleep now,” she mumbles, springing to her feet.

She’s about to get away, but his hand finds hers this time.

“Stay with me, Brienne,” he implores, with a look that threatens to melt her down, with a softness uncharacteristic of him that leaves her in a fix.

The way he speaks her name tonight… it’s just— 

Yes, he is delirious, not in his senses. And yes, perhaps, when he returns to his full strength, he’s quite likely to forget this strange exchange, this warmth his eyes have for her, never to return. Of course, when he’s back home, back in the arms of the woman he loves, he might not even care that Brienne of Tarth even existed.

But now, for this moment—

“I _need_ you,” he goes again, gripping her hand tighter, the way he says it tugging at more than just her hand.

And Brienne’s left hanging—somewhere… someplace, she hasn’t been before.

Insults and every taunt he’s ever flung at her returns to flood her mind. But shoving them all out of the window is one word.

_Sapphires._

His usual condescension, she's almost certain now, is a thing of the past, when she meets his gaze. There’s so much buried beneath what lies at the surface of those eyes, some of it she can see, the others she can sense. Compassion and remorse, they’re brimming with and the urge to get somewhere—she isn’t sure where, a naked self-awareness, a blatant _something_ he’s been hiding in unreachable depths of him so far. When she recalls his lie to Locke, when she surveys every cut and every scar that’s strewn around, decorates his body in grotesque patterns, it is the man he is that calls out to her, the monster she’d dragged with her all along, gone.

“Brienne—”

“Sleep now,” she whispers, pushing away a wayward mud-encrusted curl off his forehead as she settles down beside him, her hand still in his, their intertwined fingers resting on her lap. “I’m not going anywhere tonight.”

When he closes his eyes and leans into her, she leans back against the wall, eyes on him, skin soaking in the heat of his. 

Yes, he isn’t _them_ , though what he is, Brienne can’t quite say yet.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One day at King's Landing...

Days have gone by since he’s returned home, but home is no longer what it used to be, the _welcome_ , he was treated to leaving him with a bitter taste in his mouth.

For days, Cersei isn’t whose company he’s been craving, it isn’t she who has been gracing his dreams.

For days, Jaime has been secretly following the travel companion he once despised on her frequent visits to the Godswood, watching her watch Sansa from a distance, itching to read her mind, fighting back the urge to make himself seen.

For days, he’s been battling the two voices warring inside him—one that insists Brienne be granted what she’s here for and be rid of this punishment and the other somehow hoping she could stay here longer.

 _Stay with me._

For days, he’s been pushing it away to the back of his head, living in a false world where their exchange had never happened. But how can he ever erase the tenderness of those soft hands as they worked on him? Would he ever be able to forget the girlish blush that decorated her cheeks?

The minutes pass by as he continues to lurk out of sight, and as he continues to observe her watch the girl wistfully, her eyes helpless, devoid of the usual spark, he finds himself gradually slipping out of his prolonged reluctance.

When he’s had enough, when he’s done pretending, done with maintaining this difficult distance from her, he steps out of his cover.

“Her mother was the only one who didn’t look at me with revulsion,” she says, registering his footsteps when he approaches her. “And for a woman to have her son slain before her eyes—” her eyes are off the frail and broken girl she’s been sympathising with “—can there be anything more terrible than that?” 

“I’m sorry,” he says, though he isn’t directly responsible. “I’ll do my best to make sure she’s out of Cersei’s reach.” _Anything for you,_ he adds in his mind. “I know what you must be thinking about whatever happened, about my family, about me—”

“You’re not _them_ ,” she gently puts his worry to rest, then returns to the sight below them.

“What am I then?” he asks, the question plaguing him since the morning he’d found her dozing by his side, her hand in his. “You never told me that when—” 

She turns away from Sansa. “You remember? I thought you’d—”

“I can never forget what you did for me. I—” _need you,_ shouts out something inside him, a voice he’s finding it difficult to suppress any longer. “A man is more than his hand, you’d think,” he ruefully thinks back. “But I was wrong—”

“You _are_ wrong in assuming you're worthless.” 

He glances down at his useless limb. “Father shuns me, my sister no longer—” he shakes his head “—people talk behind my back, ridicule what I’ve become. No one cares for me anymore, Brienne, no one wants me, no one needs—”

“I do—” she hurriedly averts her eyes again, lets them hide under the excuse of surveying Sansa “—I—I do hold you in high regard, I mean.” 

“I know,” he agrees, the soft pink on her cheeks, the way her hand slips away from her hold, telling him what he wants to hear. “You’re not them.”

“I must leave,” she tries to escape, just like she did on that night he caught her blushing at his bedside.

And this time, too, before she can make herself scarce, her hand is in his.

“I need you, my lady,” he whispers, blocking her way out, cornering her to the wall. 

“That was then,” she whispers back, reaching behind her with her free hand to grope around for support. “When you were weak and—” 

“You know I don’t mean just that.”

She does, but despite what she feels deep down, her chin goes up in her usual steely firmness, and she steadies her voice, steadies herself. “You need your family and they need you, they love you—”

“Things aren’t what they used to be anymore,” Jaime says, evicting the one thing he can see is pricking her. “ _She_ is not you, Brienne.” 

“But she—”

“—is my sister,” he makes it clear, then summoning all the courage, he decides to go for it. “Father wishes for me to marry and assume my rightful position as the heir to Casterly Rock,” he thinks aloud about their reunion, hope cracking its way through the tough shell of self-loathing and gloom for the time. “What do I tell him?”

A smile begins in her eyes. “How do you expect me to help you with that?” 

“Well—” he gets closer “—I promise to do far better than Hyle Hunt or Red Ronnet or Ser Humphrey or for that matter—” he brushes his lips to her cheek, relishing the feel of her breath quickening at his touch before he pulls back “— _Renly_ , even.” He strokes her face, lets his fingers loose in her hair as he gives her a mischievous tilt of his head. “Might I also add the extremely important fact that you find me unbearably attractive and absolutely irresistible?”

“Shut up,” she playfully dismisses him, just like the last time. “That’s just your—”

“Oh, admit it, you couldn’t stop staring at me—”

“I wasn’t staring,” she denies, breaking into a deeper blush. “I was just—”

“Stay with me for the rest of my life, Brienne?” he asks more directly, getting to her lips, hoping this will take him a step closer to his destination. “I know taking on my name might not be something your sense of loyalty would approve of.” His mind takes a fleeting diversion towards the massacre his father had orchestrated, the treatment his sister meted out to the girl he now knows as a sister-in-law. “I know full well you might want to give it due consideration before you make up your mind. After all that has happened I can understand your reservations about my family—”

“You’re not _them_ ,” she says, making the rest of the journey towards their first kiss—one that tells him it is a resounding _yes_. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
